Keeps and Kings
by MrsTater
Summary: Daenerys shares a tale of her childhood, but Ser Jorah has a glimpse of her future.


**Keeps and Kings  
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The horde comes to a watering place, and Daenerys slips down from her mount with an ease Ser Jorah would not have expected from her a few months ago, especially not in her current state of being with child, and leads her silver down to the shore. Jorah follows at an easy distance for keeping an eye on her, the recent attempt on her life, and the feelings for her which the incident forced him to acknowledge, making him anxious and watchful; but he sits his mount just far enough from her that she won't feel shadowed by her newly devoted knight.

And, truth be told, that he may admire her discreetly from afar.

Jorah cannot stop himself from breaking into a most conspicuous grin, however, at the sight of Daenerys, having released her silver to drink and cool itself, dropping to her knees in the wet sand with a group of children at play. Though in years she is little more than a child herself, the months of riding with the _khalasar_ have etched away what lingered of the infantile softness about her cheeks as surely as her tender hands hardened to the reins; the gentle swell of her belly and the fullness of her breasts beneath her leather vest indubitably mark her as having passed from girlhood to womanhood.

She will make a fine and tender mother, Jorah thinks, his smile faltering as much from the dull inner ache that comes from the memory of his own lost wife and babes as from the reminder presented in the form of the dark-haired, half-naked children clustered adoringly around their _khaleesi_ that the child growing within her is Khal Drogo's son. Dreaming is futile; Daenerys Targaryen is just one more instance of Ser Jorah Mormont's extraordinary bad luck in love.

Nevertheless-ever the glutton for punishment, apparently-Jorah finds himself prodding his horse down to where she is; he smiles again, in spite of himself, when Daenerys looks up at him with eyes alight with happiness and sweet visions of her own near future-a look he well remembers. She is heedless of the mud as some of the children touch her braids and ask whether all the people of Westeros have hair the color of the moon, while others want to know whether she thinks the palace they are shaping out of a mountain of wet sand is as fine as the one with the iron chair on which her son Khal Rhaego will sit.

"I've been telling them about the Red Keep," Daenerys says, reaching out a hand to Jorah; at once he swings down and helps her to her feet, pleased that she remains by his side as they draw back a little from the children.

"My brother and I used to build castles in the sand," she goes on, her full lips curved in a small, nostalgic smile, her hand unconsciously stroking her swollen belly. "As we worked he would tell me about the citadel in which we would dwell once he had his rightful crown, and every night I would dream of being a princess in Viserys' castle. But then the next day we would return to the shore and there would be nothing to show for our previous day's long labors, and I would weep. Viserys told me I was a foolish child, that the tides rose every night and covered the beach and swept everything on it out to sea. I never told him I wasn't crying for our sandcastles, but from the fear that we would someday arrive in King's Landing and find that the Red Keep had been swept away while the Dragon slumbered."

Though the day is hot, a chill courses down Jorah's spine at Daenerys' words-such a foreboding message beneath the light-hearted façade of child's play that he wonders whether she fully grasps the meaning of it.

His gaze wanders from her to the sand keep the Dothraki children so efficiently construct. It is, of course, surrounded by a moat filled by a channel they have dug to where the lake laps at the shore. Their castle will not be carried away by any tide, but if it's not stomped flat by some horse's hooves, the water level will gradually fall and the sand eventually will dry out, causing the structure to crumble into little more than a hill, as if a castle had never existed there at all, except in the memories of broken-hearted children. An apt metaphor for the whole of human existence, Jorah thinks, if ever there was one. She was wise to weep for it, her brother the fool not to.

"On that score you need not worry," he says, without conviction. "When your husband invades Westeros, you will see the Red Keep very much still standing."

"Of course I will," says Daenerys, with a small, but defiant toss of her head, her nostrils flaring slightly. "It's the kings who crumble and get swept away by tides, not their keeps."

"Does this not make you fear for your son, _Khaleesi_?" But as Jorah watches her watch the children, presiding over them, despite her youth and slight stature, like the most formidable general on the battlefield, he knows what her answer will be.

"Not at all, Ser." When Daenerys smiles at him, her eyes burn like violet-blue flame. "My son is made not of sand, but of fire."

And if the child is not, Jorah thinks, as she wanders off to rejoin her _khal_, then his mother surely is.


End file.
